I was pretty happy with my race today. After doing a 1k warmup and getting really severe mystery big toe pain, I was convinced that I was going to have to drop out after 2k. Lucky I ignored the temptation to go out with the leaders and try and get a 2k PB, because apparently the asphalt, which normally aggravates injuries in my experience, was just what my toe needed:)
Paced myself really well for the first 5k, following my garmin to the letter and sticking to 4:00/k. Rohan from coolrunning put a big lead on me, and every time we went round a turn around, he'd send a taunt in my direction, telling me to catch up to him. Understandably, this fired me up, especially as he was running with his son in a large jogging pram (ended up doing 85:xx!) and going down the downhill towards the finish line after the first lap, I put the afterburners on and tried to make up some ground. I got within striking distance, but at that point the wind picked up, and suddenly trying to maintain 4:00/k felt like 3:30/k had before.
I was beginning to slow, but would've still managed a PB if it hadn't been for a stitch that came on at the 12.5k mark. There was no-one around me to pull me along, and I slowed big time. Next five kms saw me losing many a placing, head bowed against the wind, teeth gritted and my hand clenched into my side. Was very glad when the last lap finally arrived and the stitch subsided a little. Had a good last few ks and gave it a really hard effort down the last 500m before collapsing into the grass, utterly spent:)
Not quite the result I wanted, but given the conditions and the stitch, I'm pretty pleased with a 2 minute improvement on last week's time. Good workout in any case:)
--------
I had 15 minutes of glorious lazing in the sun before my friend called, unable to work out how to get to Kevin Bartlett reserve (where I was) for our pre-arranged bike ride. So I had to drag myself up and hop back on the bike. Felt surprisingly unfatigued, but lacking in strength in my legs. Within a few pedal stroks, I realised what the mystery big toe pain was. Thankfully it's not a stress fracture as Victoralias was suggesting, I think it's just my new bike shoes that I wore for the first time the day before! I'm hoping in time my feet will remould themselves so that I don't get any more pain in the future:P
I managed to find my friend and we rode down to Beach rd together. I say together, but he left me for dead, only allowing me to catch up when he had to wait for directions. This is a guy who had barely trained, and was riding a mountain bike (albeit a verrry good one) with a less than fully inflated front tyre. Granted I was pretty stuffed, but it still impressed the hell out of me! I slowly began to feel more spritely and when the Beach rd bike trail peetered out and we had to get onto the road for a bit, I decided to push hard and got my revenge on him by a good few hundred metres hehehe.
He had to go back to the city for a tennis match (and probably wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway:P), so the rest of the ride was solo. No real highlights or points of interest, just a solid ride until Frankston. Turning back, I almost got myself killed when I misread a car's indicators, but luckily they had good reflexes and swerved (not that it was that close, but it was closer than comfortable).
Harboured a few thoughts about the danger of road riding after that... All it takes is one moment of inattention (or malicious intent) from a driver and kapow! rider tumbles collar-bone first into the unforgiving matrix of asphalt and bicycle frame. People do seem to recognise that though, and mostly leave a good metre between me and their vehicle. I guess they'd be used to it with the volume of riders (wind put quite a few of them off on Sunday though) on Beach rd/connecting highways.
Riding back into the wind (had a headwind for both directions, lucky me:D), my mind kept replaying the line from the Crowded House song: "I'm so sore/that I could cry". I actually was on the verge of tearing up. My quads were unbelieavably sore and I could feel the barrel grating against the bottom of my energy stores. What followed were a miserable few kms until I could get back on the bike path and stop for a rest. My legs felt a lot better after I put my skins on (I am gobsmacked at how much of a difference it made), but I was still majorly glycogen depleted. I'd stopped at a supermarket after the race and bought a litre of juice, a double pack of oreos and a banana (in retrospect, nowhere near enough) but it had all vanished long ago.
It was probably the worst bonking experience I've had. Usually, I feel pleasantly disassociated from my body. It's a bit like looking down at yourself from above and thinking 'wow, look how slowly I'm going, heehee.' I have nothing left, but I don't mind. I've always relished the feeling a little bit. As Victoralias said to me last Sunday: "you'd have to take a lot of drugs to see and feel the things you do during a decent bonk". But this time, I wasn't enjoying it at all. I had a headache, and I felt grumpy, very grumpy. When people didn't move out of the right hand lane despite my repeated ringings of my bell, I bared my teeth and growled, and only barely managed to refrain from sending a jar of verbal vitriol into their faces.
There were moments when I would look out onto the beach, and everything would melt away into a sea of agreeability, and I'd be thinking "This is amazing, what am I complaining about!". But before long, the grumpiness would set back in, and the smile would be once again replaced by a snarl.
I finally got back to Beacon cove where I'd bought my provisions on the way out. I'd been fantasising about something hot with lots of salt on it (maybe that had something to do with the headache) so went and bought some chips from Rex Hunt's establishment. I tried to eat, but it just tasted wrong. They definitely weren't what I had been dreaming about for the previous 10km. I went and bought a bottle of tomato sauce from the supermarket to try and coax them down my throat, but even after that, I felt utter repugnance at the taste and threw away a good portion of them.
They did the job though. When I hopped back on the bike, I felt, while not fantastic, at least well enough to ride home. And as the kms ticked off, I felt ever better. By the time I got home, I was charging up the hills, legs not feeling at all fatigued. An analogy came to my mind of a car. It seems I have a powerful enough engine to keep going all day, I just need to make sure I keep tossing calories into the fuel tank to keep it going.
Converting the 22k of running I did beforehand into 80 odd km, that plus the 130k bike ride equals 210k. Good sign for the 210k ATB ride coming up in 4 weeks:).
--------------
Decent training week aside from Sunday. Racked up 115k (only 55k running), which is a lot less than usual, but I did do a bit of a taper. Won't happen this week though. I want to do 90k of running with 2 runs over 20k. Victoralias suggested I do a 25kish long run, and I think that is very sage advice as my legs are still letting me down over the latter stages of HMs. Am gonna do the Dingley Dozen 12k race on Sunday, but as a workout rather than a real race.
-------------
Felt like I was hungover today. Fuzzy head and very sluggish. Still finding food unattractive.
No comments:
Post a Comment